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Some of the land surrounding one of my favorite walking/jogging trails in my city.

It’s past mid-September, and I’m just now getting around to writing a new blog post. Which means this will be an update on life more than anything else.

What’s been happening to me and my family since I last blogged? Well, let’s see.

We’re still building that new house. Our original completion date was supposed to be some time at the end of September, but with cabinets, built-ins, and counter tops yet to be installed along with trim, doors, tile, grout, and lighting, that’s not gonna happen. We’re down to a lot of the smaller details, though, and are hoping we’ll be moved in by Thanksgiving.

The front of the new house. It’s getting there, but still needs more work. Contractors were putting stone around the arched window above the porch just today!

This summer has been the Season of Conventions (TM). First was Mo*Con back in May, a small, very low-key convention organized and run by the Indianapolis writer (and all-around fabulous man) Maurice Broaddus. One of the members of my writing group suggested we attend this year, and I’m so glad we did. Not only did I learn a lot about the business of writing, I met some other fantastic writers, editors, and publishers . . . and ate some amazing food. (Pics of Fountain Square, where much of Mo*Con took place, below. And, yes, my friend and I went to a cat cafe on one of our breaks!)

Next, I took off five days BY MYSELF in June to attend a wonderful convention in Minneapolis called Fourth Street Fantasy. I knew it was going to be my kind of con when one of the people who rode with me to the hotel from the airport was also attending and immediately put me at ease. In fact, I went a day early for the all-day writing seminar before the con officially started and was instantly embraced by the veteran attendees who were already there, too. The convention itself consists of single-track programming; all the panels happened in the same room over the course of two and a half days. They ranged in topic, from how to write narratives without (or with) violence to how humans communicate across vast distances (space, time, etc) and how that can look in story-form. Not everyone at the con was a writer, but everyone was super inclusive. Again, I met some fabulous people, many of whom I consider friends today. And my “writers circle” expanded even more. (Pics of all the cool scenery around the hotel in Minneapolis below.)

My little family took our summer vacation in Florida at the end of July and a week later, we attended Gen Con. It was another great time at our favorite gaming convention, but I felt like the days sped by way too fast. Part of that was because I had an obligation at home on the Sunday of the con, so I had to leave early. Another reason: Gen Con was very spread out this year and my friends spread out with it. We all had different events to attend or were staying in different hotels. I felt like I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to see or spend as much time with them as I wanted to. Still, we attended some excellent events and parties. I was given the honor of being Maurice’s (again, such a fabulous man) plus one at the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium party and, again, met some fantastic writers and editors there, further expanding my circle. And I managed to pull off one cosplay this year: an amalgam of Qi’ra’s costumes from “Solo: A Star Wars Story”.

School started for the kids right after Gen Con, and my older son was cast in a community kids’ theater production of The Hobbit. He’s playing the dwarf Bombur and is super excited to be “the fat, funny dwarf” in the play. At the end of August, I attended one more convention with my bestie: Wizard World Chicago. This convention had invited a few of the actors from the Outlander TV series as well as the author of the books on which the series is based. The celebrity panels and photo ops were fun, but I enjoyed meeting Diana Gabaldon and listening to her panels the most. It was amazing to see an author being treated like a rock star, especially at a pop culture convention catering mostly to screen media and comics fans.

During all this fun, I still managed to get some writing done. I’ve started working on more short form pieces and have been submitting them to various pro markets (on-line and print magazines). I have two speculative fiction stories out to different markets right now, waiting on responses from the editors. So far, I’ve garnered a couple of rejections, and I’m sure there will be more to come. Perhaps all I’ll receive are rejections, but that’s okay. Throughout this process, I continue to hone my craft and become a better writer. I do plan on participating in NaNoWriMo in November, but I haven’t decided whether I’ll finish transcribing a story I’ve already written in long hand or write something entirely new. I think, after a busy summer and start to the school year on top of other, more personal and stressful life events, it’s time to work on something fresh and original. Well, maybe not entirely original, since the NaNo story might be set somewhere in the Fae Realms. (Hint, hint.)

Oh, and my Bronze Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) for Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror E-book arrived in June. I’m still super proud of that one! And the medal is a nice, hefty little award to receive.

That’s it, for now. I hope the next post will be less update and more fascinating content. We’ll see if my brain will let that happen after life decides to get out of the way.

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The summer has flown by and autumn is almost here. Our annual family vacation to South Carolina happened in July, my oldest son turned 11 years old (!) at the beginning of August, school started for both my boys, and both Gen Con 50 and an eclipse happened. It’s taken me several days of getting back into the swing of things (and getting over con crud, which I seem to still have) to feel like writing anything of worth.

Really, this is just an update to let you know I’m still alive, as these things tend to go anymore. I will say that I received my copyeditor’s notes right before we went on vacation in July and worked on my last round of revisions and fixes as soon as we got home. It took me about a month, which is the fastest I’ve ever revised a full-length novel before. My copyeditor now has the final draft of When We Were Forgotten in her capable hands. Once she’s finished working her editorial magic, I’ll get to work on the interior layout, pick a trim size for the printed book, and upload the mf-er to CreateSpace.

At Gen Con, a well known fantasy author advised me to check out a certain publishing house that likes feminist science fiction. I’ve thought about submitting my manuscript to them, but after three and a half years of working on the story, I just want to get it out to all you lovely readers. I’m tired of waiting on other people to tell me it’s not what they’re looking for at this time, and I’m not ready for someone to say, “We like it, but it needs this and this and this before we’re willing to publish it.” Plus, I love the cover my friend, Devin Night, did for me. So, look for the print version of the novel to be published within the next month or so. EEEEKKK!

I think a round of pictures taken at Gen Con would be the best way to liven up this post. Here ya go:

My version of Castiel from “Supernatural” was well received on the Friday of the con, and my friends and I had so much fun cosplaying the Scooby Gang in Victorian/Steampunk fashion on Saturday (I was Daphne, swathed in so much purple satin). I also spent four hours on Friday playing one of my favorite games (Marrying Mr. Darcy) with one of my favorite authors (Mary Robinette Kowal) for charity (Worldbuilders). All in all, it was the best Gen Con experience I’ve ever had . . . and not just because of the awesome costumes this year.

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I’m dealing with the quintessential convention hangover today: tired, but the good kind of tired; missing all the wonderful people I saw, met, and hung out with; checking all the social media platforms for posts about the con to relive every moment as much as possible. No con crud (that I know of) yet, which is good. I’m bummed it’s over, but so happy to have had the experience.

A little context for you: almost a year ago, after my friend (and fellow mom, writer, and cosplayer) Rhonda and I had finished and worn our “Once Upon A Time” costumes to Gen Con, we discovered a company called Creation Entertainment was going to throw a huge convention devoted entirely to our favorite show. Our mutual friend, Meagan (also a mom, writer, and cosplayer who happens to love the show too), jumped on the bandwagon with us, and we decided to have a much-needed girls’ weekend in a Westin hotel in Chicago. That weekend just happened. It was glorious.

I can barely string two words together today, so I’ll let all these photos I took tell the story of our time together.

When we got to our hotel, we discovered the ice bucket makes a great wig stand.

My crew ready for the convention to start. (Rhonda as Snow White, Meagan as Belle, me as the Evil Queen)

Ursula won the costume contest. She deserved it.

Best Anthropomorphic Story Book I’ve ever seen.

Two Evil Queens walk into a convention…

Prince Eric, Happy, and Grumpy

The Blue Fairy and Princess Jasmine

She’s behind me, isn’t she?

The Costume Contest finalists

We got our picture taken with Hook–minus his eyeliner and the leather coat.

Belle

The real Regina/Evil Queen held my heart. She said I looked amazing. You had to be there.

Hook

Regina/The Evil Queen

Happy serenading us before the convention concert.

Almost all the actors had amazing voices, especially Granny and Prince Eric.

The Blue Fairy

Happy and Granny

Princess Jasmine

Prince Eric

Our last day!

Zelena, the Wicked Witch of the West

Prince Eric and Princess Jasmine singing “A Whole New World”

Princess Jasmine

It was the best, most epic of times. We saw so many incredible costumes and met the loveliest people. All the actors from the show had thought-provoking, fun Q&A panels. And the karaoke night and concert were both super amazing. I’m running out of superlatives. Anyway, as if you can’t tell, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

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Wow. It’s June. We’re halfway through 2017 already, and I haven’t been on the old blog in almost six months. So, what’s been happening in my little corner of the world?

The biggest news I can share is my science fiction novel – the one I’ve been working on for the past three years and counting – will not be traditionally published. On May 30, I received a rejection letter from the publisher I submitted my manuscript to way back in January. They said my novel is not right for them at this time. I’m both disappointed and relieved. This means I can self-publish as I had originally planned, and I won’t have to change a thing (except grammar mistakes) because the subject matter might not “be right” for the publisher’s audience. I’m currently waiting to hear back from a copy editor. Once the manuscript is polished and to my liking, the final book will be released into the wild. Hopefully, it’ll be done by the end of the summer, but that will depend on copy editing, formatting, and uploading everything to CreateSpace/Amazon.

Another big thing: my husband and I bought ten acres of land at the end of March. It’s a beautiful lot that backs up to a development, and it’s all forested, which means, once our new house is built, we’ll feel like we’re living in the middle of nowhere while still being a few minutes from our closest neighbors and the rest of civilization. We’ve already chosen the building site – in front of a lovely limestone ravine – and yesterday, we met with our builder and a draftsman to start working on house plans. This is a huge adventure for us, one I wasn’t sure we’d ever experience. It’s been fun, so far, with only a few minor hurdles to jump. We’ll see if it’s just as fun a year or so from now when we’re waist deep in construction. In the meantime, this is what we get to look at when we visit:

Besides not being traditionally published, my only other disappointment for the year is we’re not going to Great Britain for my birthday. The new property took a large chunk of our savings, and although we could still make the trip, I’d rather save the money and use it toward the new house. Plus, there’s a lot of uncertainty around relations between the United States and Europe. I’m not sure it’s the right time to be crossing the big pond. One day, we will cross it, and it will be glorious.

We may not be going to England, but 2017 will still be the Year of Travel. My family and I already spent Spring Break in Washington, DC, as these photos will attest:

And in a couple of weekends, we’ll be back in DC to celebrate a cousin’s high school graduation. Next weekend is Creation Entertainment’s Once Upon A Time Convention in Chicago. Two of my best girlfriends and I will be attending the con together for a moms’ weekend away, cosplaying as Snow White, Regina, and Belle from the show. There will be panels and photo ops with the show’s cast. It’s going to be epic. And, of course, we have our annual family trip to Charleston, South Carolina in July.

Oh, I almost forgot. We got a new dog.

Our poor little hamster, Skye, passed away the day we closed on the new land. The boys were devastated and immediately wanted a new pet. Since we’d been talking about getting them a dog for a long time, we decided to take a look at our local animal shelter. There’d been no plans to bring home a puppy right away, but it just so happened little Chewie was at the shelter waiting to be loved. He’s a Chihuahua/miniature pinscher mix, eight months old, and feisty. I’ll be enrolling him in puppy school soon.

I think that catches you all up to what’s been happening at Chez Cook since January. Despite looking forward to some relaxation, it’s still going to be a very busy summer for me. I recently joined a local chapter of NOW (National Organization for Women) and hope to steer some of my frustrated-with-world-events energy into supporting causes dear to me, like reproductive justice. I’ll also be more involved in my sons’ school starting in the fall as I step into the role of vice president of the board of directors. And there will be Gen Con in August, and more sewing and writing throughout the rest of the year. Lots and lots of both, I hope. Perhaps more of the Golden Orb prequels will make their way onto the blog soon. I’ve been shopping them with my new writing group, and they’ve been well received.

But for now, I must go, because there’s a child’s birthday party and a high school graduation party to attend simultaneously. Fun times, ahead!

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It’s January 12, 2017. A new month. A new year. And what have I been up to lately? Here’s a handy list:

Not long after my last post, I decided to quit Facebook. I’ve dropped in occasionally over the past week, but I’m still not on it a lot. It was a good decision to quit at the time. My levels of stress, depression, and anxiety diminished considerably without it in my life. Quitting had a lot to do with the presidential election and some of the incredible stuff showing up in my timeline. All the anger and sadness and fear on one side and the victorious smugness on the other. I couldn’t handle it, so I became a snail, curled into my own little shell. It was nice. It still is. I’m keeping up with things, but in my own way. Okay, mostly through Twitter, but that site doesn’t seem to affect me the same way Facebook does/did.

I had two suspicious moles removed in December, one on my arm, the other on my collarbone. Tests on both came back benign. Whew.

Back in October, I saw my obstetrician to have my Mirena (an intrauterine device, or IUD) removed. My husband and I are done with having kids and have taken the proper steps to make that choice permanent. However, the Mirena has been so convenient over the years. While on it, I never had to remember to take a pill every morning. I stopped having monthly cycles. There was zero cramping or stress about remembering to have pads in my purse. Truly, it was a dream. I had one inserted after my first son in 2006; it was easily removed in the office a few years later, so I could have my second son in 2010. I had another Mirena inserted soon after he was born. Although FDA recommendations may be changing as I write this, when my second IUD was put in, I was told it should come out in five to six years, when a new one could be inserted if I wanted. It’s been over six years. I saw my OB in October, and she tried to remove it in the office. Standard procedure, but it didn’t happen as it should have. The little piece of plastic had embedded itself in my uterus and just didn’t want to come out. Afterward, I spent some time waffling between going back into the office to try to have it removed in a slightly different way (with no guarantee it would come out and enduring more pain in the process), or just putting me under with general anesthesia in the hospital, hoping my body will relax enough to release it from my uterine lining. I chose the latter. The procedure happened this past Monday. It was outpatient, fairly quick, no pain at all, and I was told the IUD came right out. I’m glad I did it. Will I get another Mirena? We’ll see. Maybe having a monthly cycle again will nudge me in that direction, because it was so convenient before.

The holidays came and went. We ended up staying home on Thanksgiving, because my poor husband got sick and my van needed a piston repaired. On the other hand, Christmas 2016 was probably the least stressful holiday I’ve ever experienced, and that’s saying something. We managed to see almost all our family in the span of two weekends. There was some traveling involved, but we also had family at our house on the holiday, which was nice. We invited friends over for our annual New Year’s Eve gaming party. Lots of party games were played that evening, and we managed to extend the party (after everyone got some sleep) into the following day.

I was invited to join a new writing group. It’s small, and I’ve attended two meetings so far. Everyone is lovely. They even liked the short story (one of the Golden Orb prequels) I shared with them, which I hadn’t touched since 2014. Which leads into:

BIGGEST NEWS EVER: I AM DONE WITH REVISIONS. Let me scream that aloud again, in case you didn’t hear it right. I AM DONE WITH REVISIONS ON When We Were Forgotten! (Also, see image above.) It took me a long time to finish this last round of edits. I had several moments of doubt, of wanting to bang my head against a wall trying to get the ideas to come together, of wanting to just quit. With help from both my editor’s notes and a friend of mine who had great ideas regarding certain technology in the story, I was able to finish … the day before I had my outpatient procedure (#4 above). Because, I thought, if I’m going to go under for this procedure, I should probably have the book done the way I want it. That way, if something should happen to me, I’d have one less thing to worry about. It can be published in it’s current form, and I’d be content. A bit too morbid, perhaps? Perhaps, but I’m sure I’m not the only writer who’s had thoughts like that. Which leads into:

The book will be published some time this year, hopefully within the next six months. I’ve been thinking about finding a copy editor to make certain it’s polished. I already have a cover, so once it’s exactly as I want it, I’ll go through the whole Createspace publishing process. I have a friend who can do the ebook formatting for me, so it’ll probably be in print version first. Or I may wait until she’s done, so I can release it in all formats at once. I had the thought throughout the revision process of querying agents to shop the book around to more traditional publishers, but … eh. I think I just want to get it out into the world. It’s taken three years, off and on, to write. I don’t want it to take three more years to be read by people other than me and my editor and my beta readers. In the meantime:

I have several short stories to revise and post here on the old blog. One should be up soon, so look for that.

Cosplay ideas for Gen Con 2017 are coming along nicely. Pattern drafting may be involved this year. My Evil Queen/Regina cosplay from last year will get another wearing at a “Once Upon A Time” Convention in early June, too.

I turn 40 in late June, and the only thing I want for my birthday is to go to Great Britain with my husband. London, actually, and the surrounding areas. Plans are already in the works for that. It’s a big request, but something I’ve always wanted to do.

I’ll continue to work on our school board this year and next. I may even do some volunteering around town or get a part time job when my youngest is in elementary school. Unless this whole writing thing pans out. Who knows?

We may move to a new house this year, or we may buy a lot and start building. It’s all up in the air at the moment. Big changes, though.

And I think that’s it for now. There will be more happening as 2017 rolls along, but that’s the gist of what’s going on in my life. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and are enjoying the beginning of the new year as best you can. Thanks for your continued patience as I slogged through my own writing process. I promise, this will be the year another book comes out! And soon!

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I’m writing this blog post when I should be mowing the lawn or cleaning the hamster tank or a million other things that need to be done after returning from an out-of-town vacation. I had been mowing the lawn, but now I’m writing this post instead, because two bees stung me (or one very angry bee stung me twice), and I panicked and called 911.

In 2004, I’d had an instantaneous allergic reaction to a bee sting. My face and tongue swelled. My arms broke out in hives. It wasn’t pretty. Because of that reaction, I carry an EpiPen with me where ever I go, including when I mow the yard. I haven’t been stung since.

Until today.

I saw the bees buzzing through the grass as I pushed the lawnmower around the front yard, but I always see bees this time of year. They don’t frighten me much anymore. What I’m sure I saw were harmless bumblebees; I didn’t notice their angrier brothers until one or two of the yellow bastards decided they had had enough of me in their territory and jabbed me through my sock.

There wasn’t the immediate tangof metal in the back of my throat or the feeling of things swelling up (except my ankle), but I decided to make the call anyway. The Dispatcher and the EMTs were all very kind and helpful. The EMTs checked my vitals as I sat outside on the front steps while my boys sat inside distracted by screens. Truthfully, they’d been distracted since before I started mowing. I have a feeling they never actually heard the words bee or sting or ambulance when I yelled about my predicament from the kitchen. That’s perhaps for the best. Mama got stung. It wasn’t a huge deal this time. Their world goes on like nothing happened.

I, on the other hand, am full of Children’s Benadryl (it’s all we had) and have an ice pack on my extremely painful ankle. We’ll see if I can stay awake long enough to finish this blog post.

As I said, we were on vacation last week. We went to our usual family vacay spot: Isle of Palms, South Carolina, a barrier island just outside of Charleston. It was mostly relaxing with lazy days spent on the beach, evenings spent eating tons of fried seafood, and the occasional Pokemon hunt. (My husband and I joined the gleeful masses on Pokemon Go. We love the game. I’m Team Blue, by the way.)

Here are a few pictures to prove we were there:

That image in the bottom left hand corner is of a worker from the aquarium in Charleston helping three juvenile sea turtles find their way back to the ocean. We were so lucky to have the opportunity to watch such an amazing event unfold. The sea turtles had been taken in by the aquarium and nursed back to health from various injuries. Since they had grown to a certain size, and thus, are better able to steer clear of predators than if they had been hatchlings, they were released in the morning in broad daylight. It was an awe-inspiring sight. Later that afternoon, I was stung by a jellyfish as I was making my way out of the ocean and back onto the beach.

Nature. It’s beautiful, until it isn’t.

And I think I feel the Benadryl kicking in.

Anyway, my family is sort of in a weird “in between time.” We just got back from vacation on Saturday and unpacked, only to have to repack for Gen Con Indy, which starts on Wednesday, August 3. My husband and I will be there on our own for the first few days, playing games, attending panels and workshops, and celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Our boys will be joining us on Sunday. At ten and five years old, we’ll see how they handle being surrounded by approximately 61,000 people trying to live and play in the same one to two mile radius.

If you happen to be one of my readers and will be attending Gen Con as well, feel free to say hi if you see me. From Thursday to Saturday, I’ll look like one of these people:

After Gen Con, school starts up again for my sons. They’ll both be in school all day this year, so my plan is to get right back into revising When We Were Forgotten. I had hoped to have the novel published by now, but such is life. The upcoming days of silence in the house will be a big motivation for me to just get the thing done already.

In closing, I’d like to leave you with a poem I wrote in my new birthday journal while on the beach watching the tide roll in. And then, I will shut my eyes and take a little nap, I think, because Benadryl.

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I don’t know if it’s the post-Gen Con blues or the stress of another school year starting or the current slog through revisions on my latest novel, but I’ve been particularly sensitive to stuff of late. Facebook used to be my oasis of crazy, funny, weird, and joy. Cat videos. Geeky web comics. Thoughtful commentary on motherhood or cosplay or writing. Even the more serious posts would slide through my brain after a quiet nod of agreement, replaced by the next thing and the next and the next. Facebook — and other social media — was my distraction from the difficulties of real life.

Humiliated (and hurt, really), because I fear I’ve contributed in some way to the racism those young protesters and their brothers and sisters experience every day; confused, because I have no idea how to fix it.

One evening during Gen Con, my husband and I were walking back to our hotel from an amazing concert. I had spent the entire day in costume cosplaying as Marvel’s Agent Carter. My feet hurt and we were hungry, searching for some late night eats before getting some shuteye. As we were walking along the sidewalk, I noticed two black men — one old, one young — sleeping up against the buildings we passed. Milling around us were other gamers and cosplayers in town for the convention as well as hordes of tweens and teenagers who had just left a One Direction concert. It struck me seeing those two men on the sidewalk while people passed them by without a second glance that this was par for the course for them. Maybe they spent their day in a similar fashion, awake and asking for change or help while the rest of the world moved on by, heads down or eyes front.

It also struck me later that night in our luxurious hotel room that my life is absurd. I spent four days playing board games, eating street food, and dressing up as fictional characters while those two men and countless others slept or begged on the street. I had been fixated on how much my feet hurt from wearing heels all day, when their feet were probably in much worse shape because they’d been walking for days or weeks on tattered soles (and souls). And the only reason I was able to play and they couldn’t was because of my privilege.

My white, upper-middle class existence is probably the reason a black or brown woman didn’t get a job when I was job-searching myself after college. My white, upper-middle class existence is the reason my boys can go to whatever school my husband and I choose, including the private Montessori school they’re currently attending, while a child of color attends the least funded, most problematic public school in town.* My white, upper-middle class existence funds my closet full of clothes and my sewing and writing habits and our basement board game library, while a woman of color somewhere nearby is working three jobs just to feed her family.

As a physician, my husband works extremely hard. He spent twelve years training for the job he has now. He loves delivering babies and helping his patients, and I wouldn’t deny him that for the world. But when it comes right down to it, the difference between our high standard of living and many others’ low standard of living is either the color of our skin or the number of digits on his paycheck … or both. And that’s why I’m humiliated and confused.

How can I live this spectacular life I’m living and feel any good about it when there are so many people who can’t even come close to what we have? I am so desperately grateful that my kids will never know starvation or homelessness because we can provide for them, but I am also so desperately ashamed of the fact that we can provide for them when so many can’t.

I just …

I don’t …

What can I do? How can I fix it short of denying my own existence, short of leaving it all behind? Because I can’t do that. I love my husband and my children too much to entirely give up what we have. Like all parents, I believe my sons deserve every opportunity they’re given to better themselves, but I also feel that children who are homeless or living in sub par situations deserve even more than my own sons, because they’ve already been denied so much.

What is there to do?

We give to charity every chance we get. I’ve made blankets and gathered clothing for our local community center for the homeless. I vote. But is it all enough? Am I thoroughly playing my part? What more can I do while I have two young children at home who need my love just as much as the rest of the world deserves to have it?

I’m truly asking for answers, because I don’t want to be the problem anymore. I don’t want to be the reason those two black men are still sleeping on the street.

I want to be a better human being.

Thanks for reading. Please share your own thoughts or advice below, because I would love to have some honest, world-changing answers.

A. Cook

*For what it’s worth, the public school system where I live is exceptional, and our boys’ school created a scholarship to allow a child from a lower socioeconomic background to attend preschool there each year. It’s a step, and hopefully in the right direction, but I’m not sure if it’s making a difference, especially for children of color. Only time will tell.

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I’m dropping a quick note here to say that I haven’t forgotten the blog. Summer’s almost over as is my self-imposed writing break. Last week, my family and I spent a much-needed vacation in the Charleston, South Carolina, area doing what we love to do on the coast: swimming in the ocean and eating a ton of seafood. It was a total vacation for me, with hours of reading and no laptop mutely accusing me of being a terrible author for not having done any “real” work in months.

We came home on Saturday, but will only be here for four days before we leave again. Tomorrow, my husband and I head up to Indianapolis for “The Best Four Days in Gaming” (TM), Gen Con, one of my favorite times of the year, right up there with Christmas and Halloween. There will be much gaming, cosplaying, and shenanigans as we meet up with friends from both near and far. I don’t have a new book to promote this year, so I’ve decided to spend my con experience exclusively as an attendee, wearing costumes Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and in plain clothes on Sunday. If you happen to run into me, feel free to say hi! I’d love to meet you. I’ll probably be found hanging around my friends’ booths in the vendor hall (like Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, Booth #114) or at any number of seminars, workshops, panels, or film screenings. As much as I love to play board games, it’s just as fun to try out some of the other events happening around the con.

Gen Con ends on Sunday, and my boys go back to school on Monday. Next week will be a week of reckoning, the week to prove that I can spend time away from a project and get back into it with little difficulty. I hope to have revisions done on my sci-fi novel and back to my editor by the end of August, but that will depend on how quickly those revisions go. There may be a long period of silence on the blog while I work, or I may go ahead and start posting the prequel short stories to The Golden Orb here. We’ll see how everything goes as I try to strengthen my flabby writing muscles.

As always, I appreciate your patience. It’s been a fun summer break, but I’ve been itching to get back to writing. Stay tuned for when things start getting done!

Like this:

Actually, time doesn’t seem to fly when I’m writing because I’m such a slow writer.

Regardless, I’ve been MIA lately because I’ve been busy working on the sci-fi novella I wrote in 2013 and then handed off to an editor earlier this year. The editor, Bree (who is wonderful, by the way), sent back an in depth critique that intimidated me for about a day — enough time for me to see the story that needed to be written. And that story was finally written. It took eight weeks, but it did indeed get written. Now, the manuscript’s back with Bree so she can do her wizardly editing magic. Meanwhile, the first of the short stories I wrote in November as a prequel to The Golden Orb is with the editor for that novel, Holly (who is also wonderful, by the way), so she can do her wizardly editing magic, too. Huzzah for wonderful, brilliant women who help make my stories better!

While words are being read and cut and criticized, I’ve been catching up on other life things, like taking a much needed vacation with my family. The vacation actually happened before the novella rewrites were finished, but it was still much needed. Being forced to be screen-free for a week because of lack of affordable wi-fi and no cell reception did wonders for my head space. I came back home refreshed and ready to finish that novella!

(We went on a Disney cruise, by the way. I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance. Disney knows how to do vacations, especially if they include fabulous food, excellent entertainment, and beautiful beaches.)

One of the few pictures of me from the entire trip, because I’m generally the family photographer.

The other photo taken of me along with my oldest and a certain swaggering pirate. He called me “Love”. Swoon.

My youngest in the ocean. That’s what pure joy looks like.

One of those moments that can only be captured in the morning on a boat in the middle of the ocean.

The other thing that’s taking up my time — besides being a mom and a wife and a friend and helping organize my local moms group and helping at my sons’ school — is my sewing. I just started working on a retro-style dress for a friend, which was put on hold during the novella rewrites. The pattern was chosen because I wanted to challenge myself as a seamstress and see if I could make a garment for someone else without doing a fitting first. Once the dress is done, I’ll move on to a few costumes I’m planning on cosplaying at a couple of conventions. Here’s a sneak peek at two of them:

Can you guess what book/TV series this costume will be based upon? Four words: Scottish historical fantasy romance.

I was so excited to find this vintage suit (from the 40’s) in a thrift store in my hometown. And it fits.

This is going to be worn with the suit above. Can you guess who I’ll be? Hint: a Marvel agent. A bad ass Marvel agent, at that.

So that’s all I have for now. I’ll try to have another update soon on the sci-fi novella and the short stories. The plan is to post the short stories here or on another website in serial form, eventually putting them together in an anthology. As for the sci-fi novella, I hope to self-publish it, but I’m not sure when that will happen. I’m waiting to find out what Bree has to say after she’s done with it and what kind of revisions the manuscript will need. And if I’ll feel confident enough to publish it at all.